Simplifying instance maintenance using System Manager Automation

System Manager Automation is a managed service that provides a single, centralized interface for executing and monitoring commonly occurring instance management tasks such as patching, performing backups, executing scripts, and much more. Let's first get started by understanding a few necessary prerequisites that are required to be configured in order for automation to work in your environments.

Working with automation documents

As discussed briefly during the introduction to the State Manager service, automation documents are simple JSON-based documents that are designed to help you get started with the automation service quickly and efficiently. You can leverage the predefined automation documents or, alternatively, create your own set. In this section, we will look at how to leverage an existing automation document to patch your Dev EC2 instance and create a new AMI from it:

1. From the EC2 Management Console, select the Documents...